WordPress

Build your own local development environment. Use Linux, LXC and LXD, Apache2 and Nginx, Kexi and PostgreSQL, WordPress and Kadence to build a platform for building websites and other applications.

Getting Started

WordPress is relatively easy to get started learning and using. There is plenty of hign quality documentation, both official and not so official. WordPress is the most popular website framework.

There are many web hosting businesses that supply WordPress hosting. Bluehost has apparently decided to specialize in WordPress. And so far, Bluehost and WordPress have done everything I wanted them to do and more.

WordPress is actually a very good entry point for your adventure of learning computer science and developing applications. Get your WordPress website set up and running and start creating content. Keep exploring the computer science and learning more and building your free enterprise on your programmable, local development environment, in the home lab of your holistic home office.

Study. Get familiar with your hosting company c-panel and your WordPress Dashboard. Read the documentation. Investigate continuously and learn more all the time. Keep working. Keep studying and learning and teaching people how to live long and prosper.

What is cPanel?

cPanel is a web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a website. It’s widely used by web hosting providers to give their clients an easy way to manage their websites, email accounts, files, databases, and other server-related tasks without needing to understand the intricacies of server management or command-line operations.

cPanel offers a clean, navigable GUI that makes server management accessible to users regardless of their technical expertise. Add, remove or modify domains, subdomains, and aliases. Browse, upload, move or delete files directly from the browser. cPanel provides tools like AWStats, Webalizer or Raw Log Manager for viewing site visitor statistics.

Create and manage email accounts linked to your domain. Set up automatic email forwarding. Configure spam filters like SpamAssassin. Create databases, users and manage permissions using phpMyAdmin.

Use cPanel to install SSL/TLS certificates to secure your site. Block specific IP addresses from accessing your site. Add password protection to directories. Softaculous enables one-click installation of scripts like WordPress, Joomla, etc. Use cron jobs to schedule tasks to run at specified times automatically. cPanel includes tools to create and manage backups of your files, databases and email. It can monitor your account’s bandwidth, disk space and CPU usage.

How cPanel Works

Your web hosting provider installs cPanel on their servers. Each server can host multiple cPanel accounts, each linked to a client. After signing up, you receive login credentials for your cPanel account. You access cPanel through a web browser by entering a URL like yourdomain.com/cpanel or a direct link provided by your host. Upon logging in, you’re greeted with the cPanel homepage, which often displays key tools and information like account usage stats. Tools are organized into categories like “Files”, “Databases”, “Domains”, “Email”, etc., making it easy to find what you need.

Use the File Manager to manipulate files on your server. You can also connect via FTP if preferred. Set up new email addresses, manage mailboxes, or configure email clients. Add domains, manage DNS settings, or use tools like Softaculous for CMS installations. Implement SSL certificates, set up SSH access, or manage security settings.

cPanel allows for setting up automated tasks like backups or cron jobs, which execute scripts at set intervals. Customization is possible through themes or by adjusting settings like the layout of your control panel.

If you’re a reseller or host, WHM (Web Host Manager) is used in conjunction with cPanel to manage the server environment, create accounts and oversee all cPanel accounts on that server.

Using cPanel abstracts much of the complexity of server management. Many tasks are automated or simplified. Suitable for both small personal sites and large business environments. Given its popularity, there’s ample documentation, tutorials, and community support available.

While there are free cPanel alternatives, cPanel itself often involves a licensing fee for hosting providers which can reflect in hosting costs. While cPanel is secure, outdated versions or misconfiguration can lead to vulnerabilities. Regular updates are crucial.

cPanel continues to evolve, adding new features and improving security, making it a mainstay for web hosting management.

Sections

Click on the + sign between the blocks or at the top left of your Gutenberg editor and get familiar with those options. Scroll down in the list. There are a lot of options.

I tend to write a long story. Then, I break it up into sections. I rearrange the content a lot, gathering related content under the appropriate section heading. Edit and polish your stories.

Sections help you organize your content into logical order. They also help eliminate a lot of the repetition in your stories. Work your way through the entire website every once in a while, editing and polishing the stories. Start in the middle sometimes, so you have a fresh perspective on the second half of your stories. They get a lot better every time.

I’m not sure this is the best way to write for the web, but its how I’ve been doing it ever since I started. You may develop a better workflow. I’ve read that some people never edit or polish their stories once they’ve been posted. They do all that before they post the story.

The most important activity is to write. Produce a lot of valuable content. Each story is a valuable peace of property. Add your photos and videos. Make an interesting, attractive portal into our global cloud of artificial intelligence.

Managing Users and Comments

Setting up WordPress users and managing user login involves several steps to ensure that your website is secure, efficient and tailored to your needs. Here’s a detailed guide to get you through the process:

Before you start adding users, it’s important to understand the different user roles in WordPress. Super Admin (only for multisite installations) role can manage anything within the network. An Administrator can do anything within a single site, including managing plugins, themes and other users. Editors can publish and manage posts, including those by other users.
Author: Can publish and manage their own posts. Contributors can write and manage their own posts but cannot publish them (Editors or Admins must do this). Subscribers can only manage their profile.

Go to your WordPress admin panel to add new users to your WordPress site. On the left sidebar, click on “Users” then “Add New”. Enter a unique username. This is the name that will appear in the URL path of their posts and in author archives. A valid email address is required for account verification and password recovery. Select the appropriate role from the dropdown menu. Generate or enter a strong password. WordPress can generate one for you, which is recommended for security. Click “Add New User”. The user will receive an email with login details if you choose to send one.

By default, the login URL is yourwebsite.com/wp-login.php. However, you might want to change this for security. Use plugins like ‘WPS Hide Login’ to change the login URL. Add custom code to your functions.php file in your theme to alter the login URL (e.g., add_action(‘login_url’, ‘change_login_url’);).

Two-Factor Authentication can be implemented with plugins like ‘Two Factor’ or ‘Google Authenticator’. Use plugins like ‘Limit Login Attempts Reloaded’ to prevent brute-force attacks.

Use plugins such as ‘Custom Login Page Customizer’ to make the login page match your site’s theme or to add branding. Ensure the “Remember Me” option is available for users who log in from trusted devices.

You can edit user roles, reset passwords, or manage user details in the Users menu. Use bulk actions to change roles or delete multiple users. If needed for security reasons, you can manage active user sessions through plugins or by manually clearing sessions from the database.

Implement a strong password policy using plugins like ‘Password Policy Manager’. Keep WordPress core, themes and plugins updated. Be cautious with assigning roles, especially ‘Administrator’ to users who do not need that level of access.

If you’re comfortable with coding, you can further customize user behavior with hooks like wp_login or authenticate to add custom authentication methods or user data handling.

By following these steps, you can effectively set up and manage users in WordPress, ensuring both security and usability are taken care of. Remember, the more users you have, especially with higher permissions, the more vigilant you need to be about security practices.

Preventing Spam

Preventing spam in WordPress user comments is crucial for maintaining a clean, credible, and user-friendly website. Here are several effective strategies to combat comment spam:

Clearly state your comment policy in your comment form or a dedicated page to set expectations for what constitutes spam. Enable comment moderation in Settings > Discussion. You can set specific words that trigger moderation, or require approval for comments from new users or with multiple links. Add common spam phrases or IP addresses to the blacklist to automatically block such comments.

Akismet is a popular plugin that comes pre-installed with WordPress. Activate it, and if you don’t have an API key, you can get one for free or purchase a premium version for more features. It uses machine learning to identify spam.

Antispam Bee is an alternative to Akismet, it’s free and doesn’t require an API key. It blocks spam without CAPTCHA, focusing on bot detection. WP-SpamShield Anti-Spam offers real-time spam protection including comment spam, contact form spam, and more.

Integrate Google reCAPTCHA into your comment form. The invisible version doesn’t disrupt user experience much, while the traditional one might deter more serious spammers but could also annoy legitimate users.

Spam prevention with CleanTalk plugin uses a honeypot method where it adds a hidden field in comment forms that only bots would fill out, flagging them as spam.

Use plugins or custom code to limit how many links a user can include in a comment. Too many links might indicate spam. Implement a small delay before users can submit a comment, which can deter automated spam bots that post comments at superhuman speed.

Requiring users to register before they can comment, enables you to better manage who is posting and reduce anonymous spam. However, this can decrease user engagement if not user-friendly. If user registration is enabled, Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) can add another layer of security, ensuring only legitimate users can comment.

Regularly review comments in the spam folder or pending moderation queue to ensure no legitimate comments were caught by mistake or to learn from new spam patterns. Allow users to report spam comments, which can help in community moderation.

If you’re comfortable with PHP, you can implement custom checks or hooks like pre_comment_on_post to filter comments based on content, IP or other criteria. Use server-side or plugin solutions to limit how frequently comments can be submitted from the same IP address.

Keeping WordPress, themes, and plugins up to date ensures you have the latest security patches that might fix vulnerabilities exploited by spammers.

By combining these strategies, you can significantly reduce spam on your WordPress site. Remember, the effectiveness of these methods can vary, so it’s wise to periodically review your anti-spam measures and adjust based on the evolving nature of spam tactics.

Building Your WordPress Shop

After using WordPress for several weeks, I am fairly impressed. Its very easy to use. I do a lot of editing and polishing stories in the WordPress editor. Everything is on the Bluehost servers. I just log in and paste the story into the editor, then I edit and polish them until they are great stories.

Work on getting all the pieces of your local development environment set up and working well together, so that you can completely control every detail of your websites. Use free and opensource software, not because it is free, but because it enables you to execute your own free enterprise.

Work on keeping the stories on your website synchronized with the stories on your local file system. Use LXC and D, Git and SSH to isolate your applications from your local operating system and seamlessly connect your local development environment and your remote servers, which backup and serve your live websites. In other words, you have copies of your website in your local development environment and perhaps in a separate remote development repository, where you can collaborate with a team of developers.

In order to use your local development environment in your website development workflow, you may have to have your websites hosted in a Virtual Private Server (VPS), in order to gain SSH access to the server. And you will have to maintain and repair it yourself. Shared Hosting has its advantages and VPS hosting also has its advantages. Keep working on improving your skills, and make your choice based on your skill level.

You do not need to be a PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript programmer to build WordPress websites. WordPress and your theme do most of the programming. I use Kadence Pro theme and the WordPress’s Gutenberg Block Editor to do most of my website development work.

Once you get your local development environment set up and learn how to use it, you’ll be able to spin up an instance of WordPress, Flask or Django, whenever you want to start a new project. You’ll have to get both, a PHP development environment and a Python environment, if you want to develop both PHP projects like WordPress and Drupal, and Python projects like Django and Flask. You can also work on developing native applications, like working on improving Kontact and Calligra, in your local development environment.

Be A Prolific Writer

Remember to get in the habit of writing your stories in your text editor and copy and paste them into the WordPress editor. Writing this way, will help you keep the stories on your computer synchronized with the stories on the website.

There’s a difference between your articles and your blog posts. Articles are static content, like white papers, that are the content of your entertaining education. Your blog posts are more like news of current events, which fade into the back ground as you produce more blog posts.

Blog posts are what is going on right now. Articles are more persistent content for your audience. Once you get familiar with using WordPress to publish your stories, start adding pictures to them.

Read the stories on your website. That way you can see the stories in the context they are presented in. Edit and polish them repeatedly. They get better every time you edit them.

Produce at least 30 really valuable stories before you even think about trying to monetize your content. Continue to add valuable content after that and start working on increasing the traffic to your website. And whatever you do, do not clutter up your content with obnoxious advertisements popping up in the middle of your stories.

Monetize Your Website

Search engine optimization is an important facet of your website development. Once you cultivate a good relationship with your growing audience, then you can start working on monetizing your websites.

Perhaps you’ll write books and publish them using BookBaby, Lulu or IngramSpark or some other print on demand publishing service. You can sell the book on your website and on Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com, etc.

Affiliate programs are another good way to earn income from your website. Pick affiliate programs that match the content of your website and focus on a few really good ones, rather than a bunch of unrelated advertisements that interrupt your audience.

CJ Affiliates or Clickbank are one way that you can monetize your websites. You can recommend other people’s products on your website. You can also offer your products on CJ Affiliates or Clickbank.

Write every day. At least 5 days a week. Self-discipline is required. You are responsible and accountable for your own creativity. Taking personal responsibility for your productivity is the key to self-determination, which is the key to your own personal free enterprise. Keep working. Keep writing. Telling stories. Maximize your productivity. Minimize your distractions. Focus on creating content for your audience.